Community Mobilization

CERAR promotes community mobilization defined as a process enabling local groups to act collectively
in order to show and make the best of their knowledge and skills.

Community Mobilization Mobilization emphasizes the participation of very populations in defining, raising awareness and satisfying their own needs and to promotes their modes of action in order to restore their capacities for choice and thus enhance their collective resilience.
By participating in the strengthening of formal and informal civil society, CERAR values the experiences of communities, respect for cultural sensitivity and the promotion of the localization agenda.

Principles and projects :

Each Mobilization community has the right to self-determine and assume responsibility, to the extent possible. In protracted crises or in working with minority groups, this capacity for choice must be regained in order to enhance resilience. Thus, the Building Sumud project in the Palestinian territories showed that collective mobilization was one of the determining factors of resilience.

Community Mobilization starts from respect for values, traditions, in a word, the community cultures. It recognizes that communities often contain many resources, knowledge and social networks that impact problem solving. Respecting the principles of localization, community mobilization helps avoiding the risk of imposing external and inappropriate responses. Work with indigenous peoples in Colombia has highlighted the links between natural resource management and resilience.

Community Mobilization improves local relevance and sustainability by increasing project ownership. It also promotes dialogue between all stakeholders in order to highlight their complementarities. The NGANGU project in the Central African Republic promotes equitable partnerships between local and international NGOs.

Community mobilization provides access to resources and/or information to all levels of the community. Thus the Gen-Up project, thanks to a mentoring system of female community leaders, role models, has helped disadvantaged young women overcome barriers to access decent work.